Direct clients – Get close enough to touch, but don’t kiss

Dear readers and followers,
I am travelling back from Manchester, where I just attended Tanya Quintieri’s workshop for IAPTI. Apart from the fact that I utterly regret not taking the train instead of the bus, the rest has been a great experience.

I have to be honest, I initially planned this trip just because it seemed the right thing to do after having joined IAPTI very recently. On the way back, I am convinced this has been the best investment I’ve made in quite a long time.

There are different kinds of speakers, and I only consider useless those who share their experience in a sterile way, without trying to generalise and give tips; a couple of times I went to talks in which I was tempted to stand up and say: “Very well, your brother’s girlfriend’s aunt has a company that hired you and changed your life, so what should I learn from that?”

Among the other speakers, that is those who are useful, what they communicate depends not only on what they know, but also on how they manage to relate to the audience. It may be me, but I felt Tanya was able to empathise and communicate a lot, her incredible humanity seemed to me her best asset and what made her such a great and successful professional.

I am going home without having won the mug, which is heartbreaking for a mug collector and a tea addict, but I still take back tips that may seem basic, or even known already, but which I never really followed, for one reason or the other.

I usually say “Don’t forget to keep being naughty, Knotty surely will!!!” but I also want to add that you should never forget to keep attending to these events, because you never know what you may end up learning, but you will most certainly be surprised

2 Comments

I really hope you enjoyed yourself, Emma. I got a few useful tips and this event was the nail in the coffin of my cold emailing. I hope more colleagues get the courage to pick up the phone or to go and give a five minute talk! You are more than welcome to send us feedback, ideas and proposals, just email us at uk.events@iapti.org. Hope to see you again at our next event🙂

It’s the event that keeps on giving! I think you make a very good point about speakers “who share their experience in a sterile way, without trying to generalise;” it fits my frustration with some people (no names!) who make comments on translators’ forums/facebook/etc., and it’s probably also something I should watch out for myself!